Buy sparkle tokens for (lots of) event tokens

Title basically. I know sparkle tokens are meant to be time-money sinks, so apart from selling them for 15million at auctions (where only like 5 players could possibly buy them), they could also be farmed over months. For example, they could sell for 100 event tokens. This could encourage people to attend events long-term, help the prices of gems-crystals rise again, and most importantly this could be something doable in the long run.

I’ve agreed with this point from day one and I think 100 tokens is perfect since it was the equivalent amount of grinding it HC, since this allows them to remain special and rare, but still reasonably obtainable.

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Nah, I don’t think Sparkle Tokens should be a permanently available thing in the game. It was a promotional thing for the release of shinies, being able to turn anything you want shiny permanently would kind of devalue the worth of hunting them imo.

Shinies as a concept should just be kept close to what they are in the main games AKA how they are right now imo. A chance based additional layer to the game, not some endgame grinding goal. Too many different ways of getting them would just end up devaluing them as a whole.

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I mean, that’s easy for you to say, having grinded who knows how many…

Taking months to farm one single token is not exactly “permanent”. Just do the maths and you can see that the number of tokens is actually very limited.

Also, if shinies are a concept, they should have existed from the start. Shinies were implemented like 8 years into the game, when most end-game players already have dozens of lvl 100 Pokemon. Surely we cannot expect them to raise them again to lvl 100 just to get the shiny variation.

The sparkle token is simply making up for the fact that shinies have not been around when the majority of the playerbase was active, so they can retrospectively get their favourite pokemon as shinies.

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I have to agree with Syni. The Sparkle Token essentially allows you to completely bypass having to actually hunt a shiny pokemon; I’d really rather the token not be a permanently-farmable item capable of just completely bypassing the mechanic, regardless of how expensive it could be made to be.

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Meanwhile, I’m with Etaki. Event Tokens are a weekly thing and you get at least 3 per week. At minimum, it would take 33 weeks, or 7 and a half months, to gather the 100 tokens. At most, if staff was generous with the events and you got 12 each week, it would still take 8 weeks, or more than 2 months.

This method though wouldn’t actually devalue it though. It’s still a long process to obtain for a single Pokémon. Also, in the main games, you can soft-reset to get a shiny starter, but in PMU, you aren’t able to do that. Besides, Pokémon games have been devaluing shinies by creating mechanics to obtain them easier, and the Sparkle Token is still a patience thing.

Besides, the main games allow you to chain for shinies or use the Masuda method for egg shinies, so… If we were doing it closely related to the main games, then we would have multiple ways to get shinies.

The odds of getting a shiny right now is 1/1000, so you’ll probably see more shiny Pokémon just going through dungeons normally than farming Event Tokens for shinies. There’s also the fact that some Pokémon are way too impractical to shiny hunt, like Dratini and Gible or the fossil 'mon, or Scyther and Pinsir and other Secret Room Pokémon. Besides, the economy is still highly broken, so why not place a new expensive item for people to invest in?

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Getting shinies in PMU is already considerably easier than in main games though, since multiple mons spawn on every floor and spawning mons generally takes a lot less time (especially for the people that bring inventories of honey with them and can just spawn new mons over and over).

Think abut the long term effects of this: 1 or 2 years down the line, a lot of people including inactive players will have gathered enough tokens to get one or multiple of these tokens, and the economy will suddenly explode with these tokens, making getting shinies a money grind for a lot of people and further devaluing the aspect of hunting shinies.

Not to mention older players who have been sitting on a stack of event tokens gathered through the years. This seems flat out unhealthy and kills the fun and suprise aspect of the current system. I understand the appeal in having an end-game grinding goal, but I don’t think shinies should be that thing.

If a player wants their favorite mon as shiny, then surely hunting for them for a longer period of time will eventually pay off - I’d argue they’d get it earlier this way than inactively waiting for a sparkle token to eventually become affordable through events, as shadowlucario mentioned themselves too.

I’ve farmed one token in total, as did most people who were active enough during HC. There are a lot of shiny variants I would still love to get and you could argue I would benefit from having more sparkle tokens. I don’t see how this is relevant, though.

Why can we not expect them to do that? Shouldn’t this actually be an exciting new opportunity to be more active in the game again? Everyone is on a more or less even playing field again like this. Why does everyone have to get access to new features using their old currencies and money stacks? I’d rather see the inactive people active again as they now have an incentive to be again (no, i dont really see logging in just for weekly events as active).

Too impractical, so instead we can just bypass the entire thing by logging in for 30 minutes every week and eventually we’ll be able to get these with quite minimum effort? Maybe they are supposed to be rare and hard to get? Shinies have always been as such, and I’d actually prefer them to retain their rarity. Besides, it’s been a WEEK since they have been out - has anyone even tried these honestly?

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Oh, I missed this.

???

Permanent as in a repeatable method with no discontinuation planned. What’s proposed here is definitely a “permanent” method versus say, leaving it exclusive to the 2019 Anniversary HC.

Given how most events tend to pay out around 6 participation tokens minimum, that’s 3-4 months of just attending weekly events, and this nets you not only a guaranteed shiny pokemon, but an item with the ability to make any one pokemon of your choice shiny. And it’s tradeable.

In terms of time actually spent, if we assume events take 30-60 minutes each, that’s a mere 8-16 hours of investment over those months to gain access to Schrodinger’s Shiny.

An additional source of shiny pokemon that doesn’t have a high opportunity cost in terms of actual hours spent farming will absolutely increase the number of shiny pokemon in circulation, especially those that would otherwise be rare.

There is nothing even remotely like the sparkle token in the main games. You invest in a specific shiny or a small group of encounters with things like masuda breeding or chaining.

Not to mention the fact that, on top of getting an existing shiny pokemon of choice with the token, you’re actually turning an existing pokemon shiny to boot! The token being available as proposed is far, far more powerful than any main series shiny hunting method.

I’ve already touched on this, but taking 30-60 minutes out of your Sunday doesn’t prevent you from farming shinies normally–during not only the rest of that day, but the entire week. “You’ll see more shinies outside of sparkled token’d shinies” isn’t a valid argument IMO. They’re not mutually exclusive at all.

Unless that item is bought by sinking poke into an NPC vender, none of the inflated currency is leaving the economy. And if you just want a high-value item in the market, then increasing supply of the tokens is also going to cause their value to drop.

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Yes, that’s a very good point, some Pokemon have like 1% spawn rate, plus the chance of actually spotting them, so then adding the chance of shininess… This basically means that some Pokemon cannot be obtained as shiny unless you spend months of just grinding one particular dungeon for specific times of the day. This is different to participating in weekly events or being able to buy tokens from other players.

Also people need to stop referencing the main games only when it suits… PMD is a different game and PMU is a fan-game so anything is possible. We are just discussing what would make it more fun & challenging.

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It’s already been stated by staff that pokemon fulfilling these criteria have increased shiny odds as-is.

I actually agree wholeheartedly. Which is why I find “the main games have methods of getting shiny pokemon easily” and the like to not be very convincing arguments for making sparkle tokens buyable.

Even with the total time calculated, it still would span over a month, which means you, if alone, would only be able to create 4-6 shinies per year. Even if it is tradeable, I don’t think anyone would be willing to give it up that easily.

Yes, it will increase the number by… a very minuscule amount. People would only use Shiny Tokens on the most rare Pokémon and would have to choose carefully which Pokémon they make shiny. In other words, they would save it up for those highly impractical shinies that already take a long while to obtain.

So, in other words, we just do the 1/1000 chance with a chance of failure and have no other ways to get shiny Pokémon? Yeah, sounds great. There should be a way to increase the rate. And, as stated, Sparkle Tokens would be extremely rare with how expensive it is, taking over 2 months just to get one Sparkle Token. Certainly, it’s a powerful item, but to be honest, it’s a viable way to create variety to obtain shinies until PMU implements other ways to hunt down shiny Pokémon.

Still, wouldn’t it be strange for players just to log in each Sunday just to attend the event and not play the rest of the time. Allow me to rephrase: You’ll see more shiny Pokémon going through dungeons normally even without hunting for shinies. Event Tokens are just a weekly thing and you can’t hunt Event Tokens except for only one day of the week at a specific time.

I phrased that wrong, so my apologies there.

I was joking. Hence the slash through my comment.

Someone said that in a Pokémon MMO somewhere else saying that “main games make shinies too easy”, then made Gible 0.0001% chance to appear with the 1/8192 shiny chance still implemented. Nobody has gotten that shiny Gible despite the game being out for 9 years or so. Then again, that’s just one extreme, and I’d rather not have that within PMU.

Because most older players don’t have the time to invest in PMU like that anymore. We have a life with college, work, and/or family, so we can’t play like before. Shinies have come too late for older players. It’s not going to bring us back into the game and invest a huge amount of time into it.

There are a few players that have been doing this with Spiritomb since it was confirmed to be shiny by staff. So far, no one has gotten shiny Spiritomb if they didn’t use the Sparkle Token. It will probably take at least a month or so before we start getting reports of people finding it.

Also, think of it this way. How many rare Pokémon do we have in PMU that take a long time to hunt just on its own? How long would it take by itself just to get the shiny of it? How many hours would be invested to get enough Royal Gems for Dratini? How many hours to get enough Rupis to get Gible’s egg? Now imagine how many hours to get a shiny from these?

So many players have the “grind for months” mentality here that it’s baffling. I know shinies are supposed to be rare, but some shinies become highly impractical in many circumstances. Sure, you say “main games don’t matter”, but PMD doesn’t have recruitable shinies (except for the Wiiware, which has the same 1/8192 chance of shiny Pokémon), so main games are the best base to count on. Main games started adding more ways to help players get shinies, so why shouldn’t PMU create ways to make it easier for the players here?

If anything, I would say that this could be a temporary solution until a better way is put in place for players to get shinies. 1/1000 with a chance of failure is a kick in the face for most players and can demotivate them, especially for those who hunt them. In the main games, if you’re a shiny hunter, you can take steps to reduce risks so you can capture shinies properly, and it becomes a strategy-type game for each Pokémon (such as using Sticky Web or Mean Look to keep a shiny Abra from escaping with Teleport or using Damp to prevent Graveler using Selfdestruct) and have multiple chances to catch it. In PMU, what can you do if you’re a shiny hunter? Work towards a higher rank and have the Golden Mask to increase the recruit rate, but still have the possibility of failure even if you do everything right just because it wouldn’t join.

1/1000 is nice chances, sure, but the main games have ways to improve the chances of a shiny appearance. You can get 1/273 in LGPE if you have a catch rate of 31+ with Shiny Charm. You can get 1/683 in SuMo/USUM through SOS battles by getting a chain of 70-255 with Shiny Charm. In USUM, you have a 36% chance of getting a shiny if you enter a three-ring after travelling 5000+ lightyears. PMU doesn’t have any way to affect the shiny rate.


… And during the writing and research of this, I realize that putting in Shiny Charm might be the better solution than making buyable Sparkle Tokens. I guess my problem is there’s no way to effect the chance of the shiny Pokémon. However, since I spent over two hours writing this, I’m just gonna post this in full since I need to get to bed and not bother editing this. Have fun tearing this apart, Leo!~

Have to disagree. I’m basically recapping what everyone else has already said, but oh well.
Personally I already feel like there’s too many shiny Pokemon as it is, lol. Some could argue that they are still too common.
I understand there’s no significance really with Shiny Pokemon, but it’s still something that should be always be a severe grind for. All you have to do with event tokens is pop on for an hour or 2 on a Sunday and just wait till you have enough for a Sparkle Token. No grinding in that, just laziness for a shiny Pokemon which completely kills the point and hype for one.
I know I sound quite negative at the moment, but I can ensure you I actually love Shiny’s. But I disagree with the whole token / item to automatically change a Pokemon into a shiny… hence why town is full of shiny’s.
I’d have to disagree with it ever making a return but I’m feeling pretty negative right now, but would rather see it return as a seasonal event than something permanent. Just worried Shiny Pokemon won’t get the hype and respect that it did a week ago.

However, and don’t get me wrong I know this is a PMD game. Doesn’t technically need to follow the main games and it probably shouldn’t in my opinion, and it also must be difficult thinking of a new system and such to get a shiny compared to what it’s like in the main game also and I more than respect the fact that shiny’s a now obtainable one way or the other.
I think I prefer how the shiny’s work now honestly. Don’t think they need to be made any easier to obtain otherwise incoming hoarde of constant shiny Pokemon, haha.

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As an alternative to a sparkle token, we could get items that increase the specific chances of a shiny spawning of a certain type. For the sake of an example, lets call it magic coin. There would be magic coins for each typing, (And do not stack) like Magic Fire Coin and what not, available via event tokens, the staff seemed a lot more open to ideas like this when asked in Global. I completely agree that shinnies could be a way to burn more tokens but if sparkle tokens specifically aren’t very accepted, there are other alternatives.

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I was kinda think’n; what if instead, we got ways to increase shiny odds in individual dungeons for a fee or certain amount of a particular item? more a late game thing. this way if it needs balanced again all it needs is to be increased in what’s required to set the shiny odds higher for when you’re in the dungeon. Could encourage people to run stuff together more, if multiple people with increased shiny odds stacked the dungeon rates. This way it only increases shinies you’re looking for and those around it rather than spiking the entire world’s shinies and ultimately causing only a little bit of inflation, but way more traction.
(on a different note, maybe make them a surefire recruitment chance? I know the Pokemon Gift kinda eliminates the need, but realistically not everyone knows about that, and some shinies might end up having a negative chance, rendering it useless and costing you 40 tokens cause it breaks)